While I have never had to name anything other than a dog and two fish (Wookie, Waldorf and Statler, respectively), I have a lot of friends who are getting to the point where they have to name children.

It's becoming harder and harder these days to come up with a name that's unique, but not too unique. A name that no one else in your family or circle of friends have already used. A name that works well with your last name (note: please don't make your kid's first and last name rhyme).

I know that a lot of parents go with family names, which is cool (unless you're one of George Foreman's kids). I'm glad my parents didn't employ that way of thinking with me however. I wouldn't have wanted to grow up being an Ethel, or a Dagmar.

Some parents go with the names that are popular at the time. But how many other Isabellas, Edwards or Jacobs do you want in the same class with your child (who also has the same name)?

Some families go with the whole "same first letter" thing. For example, the Duggars. They have 19 kids. All of those kids have names that start with the letter "J". Now, this plan is good, in theory. You might, however, want to take into consideration how many kids you plan to have. I can't imagine coming up with 12 names that start with the letter "Q" is an easy task. And you don't want one of the kids feeling left out. Or end up naming it Quetzalxochitl (which means "precious flower, queen" in Aztec, in case you were wondering).

In fact, just this past weekend, my roommates enlisted the help of our friends to choose a middle name for their baby. Yes, we were allowed to vote on middle names. While they aren't planning on finding out the sex of the baby until it's born, they already had a boy and a girl name picked out. Olivia for a girl and Nolan for a boy. Not bad choices, I would say.

I was interested to see what choices we were given for middle names. For a girl, we got to vote between Olivia Kaylee and Olivia Quinn. For a boy, the choices were Nolan Rhys and Nolan Danger (and who hasn't wanted to say "Danger is my middle name" and actually be telling the truth). Olivia Quinn and Nolan Danger won out. Now is the waiting game until the baby comes.

I think I'm actually a fan of waiting to pick the name. What if you pick a name and the baby comes out and doesn't "look" like a "insert name here". That actually happened to my parents. My name, up until the time they looked at me, was supposed to be Nicole. One look at me and it became Wendy. If you ask them, to this day, they aren't even sure why they picked that name.

Just this past weekend, my roommates enlisted the help of our friends to choose a middle name for their baby. Yes, we were allowed to vote on middle names. While they aren't planning on finding out the sex of the baby until it's born, they already had a boy and a girl name picked out. Olivia for a girl and Nolan for a boy. Not bad choices, I would say.

I was interested to see what choices we were given for middle names. For a girl, we got to vote between Olivia Kaylee and Olivia Quinn. For a boy, the choices were Nolan Rhys and Nolan Danger (and who hasn't wanted to say "Danger is my middle name" and actually be telling the truth). Olivia Quinn and Nolan Danger won out. Now is the waiting game until the baby comes.

If you've hit a dead end when it comes to naming your pending bundle of joy, our friends at squidoo.com have laid out some guidelines.

What fun, unique baby names have you come across lately? What method did you use when naming your kids?

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